News Journal staffers have had company iPhones for five months now, and have moved from viewing them as a novelty to finding out how the best utilize them when gathering news. Reporters that never shot video are now shooting video, photographers I didn’t expect to use Instagram are using Instagram and developers are working to create apps for various special projects.

Personally, I have used my iPhone to tweet photos and information from assignments, tethered it to my computer to transmit images and have used it to shoot video when out of memory in either my Canon or Sony.

Out of all of the uses for the iPhones so far, my favorite has to go to our chief photographer, Suchat Pederson. Shooting with a Canon Mark III, Suchat has paired his Eye-Fi SD card with his iPhone, which he hangs around his neck. Every photo that Suchat tags in-camera is automatically transferred to the camera roll in his iPhone (by default, the Eye-Fi will transfer every photo taken, but you can change it to every tagged photo using the Eye-Fi app). From there, you can bring your photos into an app like Photogene2, which lets you batch apply IPTC information and then send the photos in via FTP, email or a variety of other methods.

Using this method, a photographer is able to transmit professional quality images directly from the scene, as opposed to relying on your iPhone camera for up-to-the-minute web content. Already, Suchat has used it to transmit images from accidents and sporting events, allowing our website to have a gallery up before he is even back in the office.